
Hypothetical Comparison in Turkish
Author(s) -
Utku Türk,
Ömer Demirok
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
proceedings of the workshop on turkic and languages in contact with turkic
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2641-3485
DOI - 10.3765/ptu.v6i1.5054
Subject(s) - turkish , formalism (music) , semantics (computer science) , mathematics , degree (music) , computer science , linguistics , philosophy , physics , art , musical , acoustics , visual arts , programming language
In this paper, we present a preliminary investigation of the complex formative -mışcasına in Turkish, used for hypothetical comparison. We observe that -mışcasına differs from its counterparts in previously studied hypothetical comparison constructions in one key aspect: It can naturally target non-eventive nominal predicates. Furthermore, we find that -mışcasına is primarily licensed in linguistic contexts that make a gradable property available. Building on these initial empirical observations, we flesh out a novel account of hypothetical comparison that makes use of a well-established formalism of degree semantics and semantics of equatives, eschewing the intricate notion of event similarity which is central to previous accounts. In particular, we argue that -mışcasına compares an actual degree against hypothetical degrees, asserting that the actual degree is greater than or equal to any of the hypothetical degrees.